


how the years and our youth passed on

by ama



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon, Sequel, Sexual Tension, gay camping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-04
Updated: 2017-07-04
Packaged: 2018-11-23 12:19:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11402295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ama/pseuds/ama
Summary: A year later, Speirs comes to Oregon.





	how the years and our youth passed on

**Author's Note:**

> for lookashiny, who requested a fic set one year after 'and the night is our own' on tumblr, although it can pretty much be read on its own. again, title comes from The Gaslight Anthem's "Miles Davis and The Cool."

There is someone sitting on the steps.

Malarkey slows as he walks towards the cabin and finally he stops altogether. He should say something, call out a greeting, but he can’t manage it—he’s shocked enough to see _anyone_ sitting on his stoop when he’s been alone for two whole days in the middle of nowhere, let alone Ronald Speirs, in civilian clothes with a suitcase at his feet and his sleeves pushed up to his elbows. Malarkey’s never seen Speirs in civilian clothes before. It’s like seeing a nun in her undergarments; he feels like he should avert his gaze.

“I asked about you in town,” Speirs says by way of an explanation. “Not that many Malarkeys out here; the woman at the general store told me where I could find you. Some lumberjack drove me part of the way, and then I walked.”

Malarkey accepted this information with a nod.

“You’re staying for lunch, then?”

Speirs’s gaze falls to the trout Malarkey is clutching by its tail.

“Got another one of those lying around?”

Malarkey laughs.

“Come on,” he says as he mounts the steps. “I’ll show you the mess.”

The cabin doesn’t have electricity, and he doesn’t bother to light the lamps as they walk through. It’s lovely inside, dark and cool, and he’s been in the sun for most of the morning. Sweat is prickling at the back of his neck, and he can only imagine Speirs is hot and tired, too, if he’s been walking all this way.

“My family’s been coming here for years,” he says over his shoulder. “Well, not my parents so much anymore, but my dad and his brothers each have part ownership. I usually take my kid brother up a few times in the summer, but poor guy broke his leg last week, so it’s just me for now. My cousins were up for the fourth, I’ll probably come back later in August. You want a corned beef sandwich, or tinned salmon?”

“You’re carrying a thing like that around and offering guests salmon paste?”

“This fellow’s going to be for dinner—there’s an icebox. And if you’re planning on staying for that, too, we’ll have to go out on the river again this afternoon. Guests earn their keep at Chez Malarkey.”

Speirs gives him a look that makes him grin, and pulls out a chair at the kitchen table. He sits down and takes in his surroundings. It’s a small cabin, with just a sitting room, a kitchen, and one bedroom, and Malarkey is suddenly self-conscious. He loves this place and he’s not sure if he really _wants_ to share it—at least not with someone who doesn’t appreciate it the way he does.

“It’s a nice place,” Speirs remarks, and Malarkey’s anxiety is replaced by relief in record time.

“Yeah, it’s not a bad spot. The river comes nearby, and there’s usually plenty of trout and bass, and every once in awhile you’ll find mussels. I brought some food and supplies up with me, but honestly you don’t need that much. You’ve got the fish, and there’s plenty of edible plants if you know what you’re looking for—watercress and dandelions and mushrooms, that kind of thing—and berries. I just went out this morning to check, there’s a bunch of blueberry and blackberry bushes about half a mile, a mile east, and they’re doing just fine. There’s game, too, if you’re a hunting man. I’m not, but there might be a rifle in a closet somewhere—”

He’s chattering, he knows he is, as he puts the fish in the box and tries to tidy the kitchen. It’s not messy, but with no one else there he hasn’t bothered to put away half of his tins, or the plates after he washed them, and he’s trying to clean without drawing attention to the clutter. He jumps when Speirs puts a hand on his back; he hadn’t even heard the other man stand up.

“Corned beef’s fine,” Speirs says. He opens the icebox and finds two beers.

“Those are in short supply, you know,” Malarkey warns him. “I only brought enough for me.”

“We’ll ration them,” Speirs promises as he cracks them open. “For now, a toast.”

“All right. Toast to what?”

“To good company.” He taps his can against Malarkey’s and takes a sip, but Malarkey pauses.

“Did you just toast your own arrival?”

Speirs grins.

“You always were a fast learner, sergeant.”

There’s nothing lewd in his voice, but there’s a _look_. His eyes seem to flicker down Malarkey’s body once, quickly, enough to set off firecrackers in his gut. He doesn’t let it show. He takes a breath and tells himself to be patient, and returns the toast with a smile.

⸺

That afternoon, they go fishing. Speirs is terrible at it—it’s the first time Malarkey has ever seen him fail at something, and he does his best to hide just how amusing it is, although he doesn’t blame himself for laughing when Speirs gives up, tries to step back onto the shore, and ends up falling in the river. He doesn’t think anyone should blame him for that.

Speirs pulls himself back up on the bank and dries in the sunlight while Malarkey expertly guides his line and catches another trout. They take the long way back, through the woods, and harvest some greens and mushrooms for dinner. Speirs is attentive while Malarkey explains what to look for, which is nice; there’s probably always going to be a little part of Malarkey that preens at being able to impress an officer.

It’s a beautiful night. They have dinner outside and remain sitting on the porch for several hours, updating each other on mutual friends and reminiscing on old times. It’s funny, hearing about Toccoa from Speirs’s point of view. Malarkey can hardly imagine what it was like to be at Toccoa without being under Sobels’ thumb.

“Dick told me about him,” Speirs says thoughtfully. “He said he was the worst commander he’d ever seen—do you agree?”

“It’s hard to say,” Malarkey says slowly. “Never having him in combat. Looking back, I think… he was chickenshit about some things, but I don’t know if that’s all bad. You know, we all hated running up Currahee. We complained about night marches. But when we did well on our tests, or when we beat that marching record, we were proud as hell. We acted like we did it all by ourselves, and thinking back, a lot of that was Sobel.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” Speirs grins. “It’s a tactic, and not a bad one, either.”

“But he wouldn’t have been a _good_ commander,” Malarkey presses. He taps his cigarette into the ashtray between them. “He wasn’t like you. He didn’t really _know_ what he was doing, and he got mixed up with maps and strategy. Maybe, maybe, if we really liked him, and he saw that, he would have trusted us enough to set him right. But we didn’t, because his tactic was mean, and he would have gotten a lot of people killed.”

Speirs accepts this. His eyes are piercing even in the darkness, with nothing but a lamp between them and the white light of the half-moon.

“You would’ve been a good officer,” he says, and Malarkey laughs. “I mean it. I don’t pay useless compliments.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You were a good NCO.”

“Yeah, but I—being an officer is different. You have to be…” He fumbles with his words. “Reserved. You can’t—there’s got to be a line, somewhere.” He swallows. “You only knew me after… after…” He sucks on his cigarette and lets his eyes drop to the wooden slats of the porch. “I was different, before. I couldn’t’ve been an officer.”

He thinks he feels Speirs looking at him, but when he finally manages to look up, Speirs is looking out over the rail, across the grassy plain towards the low hills in the distance.

They go to bed soon after that. It’s a large bed, big enough that Malarkey and all three of his siblings used to fit with their parents, back when they came here as a family. They each climb in on their own side and there’s no need to discuss the situation, but that doesn’t stop Malarkey from thinking about it. He spends the first half hour almost holding his breath, hoping that Speirs will roll over and kiss him—he doesn’t think he’d be able to do it himself. He falls asleep waiting.

The next day is more of the same. They pick enough blueberries to fill a bucket, and make pancakes with blueberry syrup for lunch and dinner. Speirs talks more than the day before. He talks a little about his childhood in Scotland and a lot about the different places he’s lived. Scotland, he thinks, was a little like Oregon.

“I remember a lot of fog and a lot of trees,” he muses. “There must have been cities, I suppose, but my mother thought the country was better for children. There were more sheep than people at all my birthday parties.”

“That explains a lot,” Malarkey teases, and without any shame at all, Speirs takes a handful of blueberries from his bucket and smears them on Malarkey’s white t-shirt.

That night after dinner they crack open a few more beers. When they go to bed, Malarkey is hyper-aware of the closeness of Speirs’s body; he thinks they’re lying closer together than they were the night before.

 _Come on_ , he urges himself. _Just—reach out—_

But after two days, he’s nervous. If Speirs came here for this, why hasn’t he made a move? What could he be waiting for? Malarkey lies still for what feels like hours, listening to Speirs’s breathing and smelling the faint odor of his sweat and trying to decide if Speirs is awake, and just as attentive as he is, or if he’s fallen asleep. Finally, just as he’s about to give up, Speirs sits up. As quietly as he can, he fishes out a lighter and a pack of cigarettes from his case, and walks out of the room. The floor creaks as he moves and Malarkey sighs.

It’s been a hot day, hotter than before, and the air is soaked with moisture and he’s on edge. He can’t take the waiting anymore; he jerks off underneath the blankets, fast and near-silent and desperate. At the last minute he grabs his blueberry-stained t-shirt off the floor and ejaculates into it, and stows it under the bed so Speirs won’t notice anything amiss. He curls around his pillow and forces his breathing to slow. He listens for the creak of the floorboards, but he doesn’t hear anything.

⸺

They go swimming the next afternoon, after lunch. It’s been a real scorcher, and after working on Malarkey’s truck for part of the morning, and taking a short hike, and fishing for lunch, they’re burning up. They don’t have swim trunks, but there’s no one for miles around, so they don’t hesitate about stripping off their clothes and wading out to the middle of the river at its widest and slowest part.

For a few minutes they laugh and dive under and shake their heads, delighting in the cool water and not particularly noticing each other, and then Speirs swims over and tilts his head, staring at Malarkey’s shoulder. He barks out a laugh.

“What?” Malarkey asks, splashing him preemptively in case the answer is rude.

“I thought you had gotten tan,” Speirs says. He pokes his shoulder. “But I was wrong. You’re just one giant freckle.”

“That’s it.”

Malarkey gets an arm around his neck and tries to dunk him under, but Speirs wiggles out of his grasp and tries to retaliate. They roughhouse for a while, slipping in each other’s grip and on the smooth, mossy stones beneath their feet. They surface for air every few moments, and during one of those pauses, Malarkey suddenly freezes. He’s aware of his body in a way he wasn’t a moment ago—he’s aware of Speirs’s body and the way they slip against each other, and he realizes that he’s not sure if they’re pushing each other away or pulling close.

Speirs stares back at him. He lets go, and Malarkey’s heart starts to pound. He lurches forward, and Speirs jerks back.

Malarkey’s face is turning red for reasons that have nothing to do with the sun, but Speirs takes hold of his hands and begins to walk backwards, moving slowly through the water. They’re standing on the bank of the river, water up to their knees, when Speirs takes hold of Malarkey’s face and kisses him.

He groans. This is so familiar, this is what he’s been waiting for, this is what’s been popping into his head unbidden all year. He reaches up to grasp Speirs’s shoulders and hold him close, but Speirs is hard to hold onto and already moving, breaking the kiss and attacking Malarkey’s shoulder, his neck, his chest, licking up the trails of water and sucking at his skin. It’s single-minded and intense, and by the time Speirs is falling to his knees with a splash, he’s already hard.

“I want—” Malarkey tries to say. It’s difficult because the moment Speirs swallows his cock the rest of his sentence becomes _this this this I want this forever, don’t stop_. Speirs takes his hand and puts it on the back of his own head, and Malarkey runs his hand through the wet locks obediently. “I want you to fuck me,” he manages breathlessly.

“Took you long enough,” Speirs says in a throaty voice. He presses one last kiss to the side of Malarkey’s cock and stands. He wraps a hand around his wrist and drags him back to the cabin, and the rest of the night is a bit of a blur.

It turns out that all of Malarkey’s worries were moot, after all. Speirs fucks him on all fours up by the headboard, and on his back with a leg hooked over Speirs’s shoulders, and again later that night on the couch, and he doesn’t spare a moment thinking about whether it hurts or whether it’s a sin or whether it means he’s queer for sure. All he does is thrash against the sheets, grip the back of the couch, roll his hips, and beg _more, more, oh god, yes, right there, more_.

In between rounds they have tinned salmon sandwiches in the living room, and afterwards they curl up together on the master bed with a bowl of blackberries and a pack of cigarettes.

“I almost woke you up last night,” Speirs confesses. “You nearly drove me crazy. I went out for a smoke and came back and the room smelled like sex. I didn’t know if I was furious or aroused.”

“Well what were you _waiting_ for?” Malarkey laughs.

“An invitation.”

“You had no problem barging into my house or eating my food without an invitation.”

Speirs shrugs and bends down to kiss his shoulder.

“Call me old-fashioned.”

⸺

Malarkey wakes at dawn the next morning. He doesn’t know why, but one moment he is sleeping peacefully and the next he is awake, alert, listening to the silence and peering through the darkness. The bed is empty and the cabin is quiet except for the noises outside—birds chirping, bugs whistling, the like. He climbs out of bed and pulls a set of pajamas out of his pack. It seems backwards, putting them on now, but he doesn’t want to get dressed yet and he doesn’t want to walk around naked.

The coffee pot is already on the stove when he walks into the kitchen. He holds the back of his hand near the metal and feels heat radiating off it, and pours himself a cup.

Speirs is sitting on the front steps. He’s wearing a pair of pajama pants but no shirt, and his eyes are fixed on the horizon. It’s a hazy morning, more grey and purple than any other color, but the sun is still a bright spot behind the thin clouds, and a line of honeysuckle thread clings to the outlines of the trees and the hills.

“Morning,” Malarkey says.

“Morning. I made coffee, did you get—?” Speirs looks over his shoulder for a moment and sees the cup in Malarkey’s hand. He turns back to the sunrise. “Good. It looks like it’s going to rain today.”

Malarkey doesn’t respond. He grips his cup tighter and stares down at the whorl of Speirs’s dark hair.

“The woman I talked to in town,” he says abruptly. “The shopkeeper. She said you were planning to be back home by tomorrow night. It’s probably a good idea to keep on schedule. I looked in the pantry and we’re running low on supplies.” He takes a sip from his coffee. “God, is the exact same shitty brand the Army buys? It tastes like it.”

Malarkey sighs. He sits down on the steps and rests his head on Speirs’s shoulder, closing his eyes. He hadn’t realized he was tired before, but he is. He’s sore from swimming and sex, and he wants to go back to bed. Speirs kisses the top of his head.

“Hey, beautiful,” he whispers, and Malarkey has to swallow before he speaks.

“This isn’t real, is it?” he asks in as normal a voice as he can manage.

“Don—”

“It’s okay. I didn’t think Austria was real, either. But I’m glad… this was nice.” He manages a smile and lifts his head, rests his chin on Speirs’s shoulder instead so he can kiss him on the mouth.

“It could—we could make it work,” Speirs says in a voice that tacks on _couldn’t we?_ at the end. It’s the only time Malarkey has ever heard him doubt himself. “I could come back. We could write. We can figure something out.”

“I don’t—I don’t know how—”

“We don’t have to know how. This isn’t war—nobody dies if we don’t know what we’re doing. We just have to…” He searches for the words and sighs when they don’t come. “ _Try._  These last few days—they’ve been easy, haven’t they?”

“Yeah.”

“Well. Maybe it would be easy. If we don’t get wrapped up in thinking about it. I think we should give it a go.”

There’s something raw and earnest in his face, and Malarkey can’t look away. He swallows past the lump in his throat and tries to shrink his focus, tries to wipe away the rest of the world in his mind so the only thing that exists is this cabin. It’s bigger than Speirs’s room in Austria. Not as big as the world, but it’s a step up. Maybe it can be enough. Maybe, if they can take it one step at a time… It’s probably impossible, but he doesn’t want to say that just yet.

“You’re the captain,” he says with a smile, but he can see at once he doesn’t fool Speirs.

“I don’t want to hear that,” he says seriously. “Just—yes or no.”

Malarkey is quiet for too long, considering it. He can see the hope fading from Speirs’s eyes, the longer he waits, and then suddenly they both jump as thunder rumbles in the distant sky. They look towards the sound and see that darker clouds have blocked the feeble sunlight. Malarkey looks down and realizes Speirs’s hand is covering his. He takes a deep breath.

“Yes,” he says. He kisses Speirs’s cheek and stands, and goes back into the cabin before the rain begins.


End file.
